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House panel votes to cite Karl Rove for contempt of Congress

House panel votes to cite Karl Rove for contempt

A House panel Wednesday voted to cite former top White House aide Karl Rove for contempt of Congress as its Senate counterpart explored punishment for alleged Bush administration misdeeds.
Karl Rove's lawyers says he is immune from a congressional subpoena.

Karl Rove's lawyers says he is immune from a congressional subpoena.

Voting 20-14 along party lines, the House Judiciary Committee said that Rove had broken the law by failing to appear at a July 10 hearing on allegations of White House influence over the Justice Department, including whether Rove encouraged prosecutions against Democrats such as former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman.

The committee decision is only a recommendation, and a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said she would not decide until September whether to bring it to a final vote.

With little more than three months before Election Day, it wasn't clear whether majority Democrats could take any substantial action in a political environment in which time for the current Congress is running short and lawmakers face a host of daunting legislative problems and a cluttered calendar.

The House committee vote occurred as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee delved into allegations of wrongdoing ranging from discriminating against liberals at Justice to ignoring subpoenas and lying to Congress.

White House aides not immune from subpoenas, judge says

Congress can force White House aides to testify under subpoena, a U.S. District Court ruled Thursday, rejecting Bush administration claims of immunity.

Former White House Counsel Harriet Miers is not immune from congressional subpoenas, a judge ruled Thursday.

The House Judiciary Committee has been seeking to force former White House Counsel Harriet Miers to testify before Congress about the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. The White House has been resisting, claiming she cannot be compelled to appear.

But the White House position "is without any support in case law," Judge John D. Bates wrote in a 93-page opinion released Thursday.

He said the notion that "Miers is absolutely immune from compelled congressional process" is "unprecedented."

But, Bates added, the ruling does not mean that Miers and Joshua Bolten, the White House chief of staff from whom House Democrats have demanded White House documents, could not assert executive privilege during congressional testimony.

The court "resolves, and again rejects" the notion that senior White House aides are absolutely immune from subpoena, but the "specific claims of executive privilege that Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten may assert are not addressed -- and the court expresses no view on such claims," Bates wrote.